


Conversational Pteranodon: Intermediate Level

by ckret2



Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [15]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Interspecies Relationship(s), Kaiju Linguistics, Language Barrier, M/M, One Shot, also featuring: Rodan scaring the shit outta the Navy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21665365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Ghidorah and Rodan are stuck in Antarctica with an injured wing.They might as well use the time to try to tear down the language barrier between them a little more. It’s a chance to cover words that they haven’t had an opportunity for before—words like “snow.” Or “name.” Or “maybe.” Or “love.”... And maybe try to figure out a way to get back to warmer territory.
Relationships: King Ghidorah/Rodan
Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1476800
Comments: 10
Kudos: 107





	Conversational Pteranodon: Intermediate Level

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an ongoing series of Rodorah one-shots. If you don’t wanna read the others, all you need to know is: last fic Ghidorah tried to leave Earth and Rodan persuaded him to stay by, uh, shredding a hole in his wing; Ghidorah doesn't understand Earth languages but is learning Rodan's; Ghidorah is a mild empath (telepathically reads/projects emotions); and Rodan doesn’t refer to anyone by their canon names because his species names people based on the volcano/island/geological feature they call home.
> 
> This is a sort of thematic sequel to [Conversational Pteranodon 101](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20930303), but the main connection between it is Rodan teaching Ghidorah his language.

So there they were.

Two idiots, sitting all the way over on the left hub of the world, freezing their tails off.

Because the golden one had a giant rip through his wing and couldn’t fly now.

And Nido, the one who ripped the golden one’s wing, would be an absolute turd if he flew off and left him in the ice alone. So there he was, too.

Huddled up against the golden one, under his wing—his right wing, the undamaged one—for warmth.

In the snow.

Two _absolute_ idiots.

… Maybe four idiots. Nido actually wasn’t sure. He’d started developing doubts earlier when he’d seen the heads apparently fighting each other. He should ask.

At least they had time to talk now.

Nido nudged the golden one’s side. “Hey.” As the heads looked at him, he scraped at the ground with one foot, digging beneath the snow until he’d dislodged several rocks. Once he got six—that was enough for now—he scooped them up with his foot, cradled them in one wing—they were so _cold_ , rock should never be that cold—and plucked them up one at a time with his beak to drop into the snow. He counted them as he dropped them: “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.” Once he finished, he looked up at them, waiting for a reaction; and, when he didn’t get one, scooped the rocks back up and repeated the process.

The second time, they made a small noise of comprehension. Nido scooped the rocks up, dropped a couple, and looked up at the golden one.

“Tsu.”

That sounded enough like two. “Yes.” Nido added three more.

“Vive.”

“Yes.” Good, lesson taught. Nido looked up at the golden one and asked, “Golden one is one? Or golden one is three?”

The golden one drew back from Nido at that—he even unwrapped his wing slightly, which was a very unwelcome development in this frigid hell—and gave him a brief surprised look before turning away.

But then he said, quietly, “Gidiwi is three.”

Nido was nearly bowled over with paralyzing, mind-numbing shock.

It lasted about two seconds.

Then it was just another fact about the golden one. Golden _ones_. In the grand scheme of thing, it didn’t even compare to the fact that they’d come from outer space.

“Okay,” Nido said. He picked his last rock out of his wing, flicked it at their chest, and said, “Golden ones.”

“Yes? What?”

“Golden _ones_.”

“Gidiwi?”

“Golden onesss.”

“Gidiwizzz.”

It was close enough. “Yes.”

So. Three of them, sharing one body. What did that mean—as in, in terms of Nido’s relationship with them, what did it mean? Relationship? Relationships? He was pretty sure they were still courting—and now that Nido had won their latest battle, that meant he had to take the lead—so was he supposed to court each one individually? Or was he supposed to treat them as a collective? Was he even supposed to court all of them, or was only one going to be his mate while the other two went and found other mates somewhere else? What did having a mate _mean_ to them? They were from a different planet—how _did_ they mate? This meant they probably couldn’t have eggs together. Which was fine, he supposed—there were other measures for the transition from “courting” to “permanent mates” than laying eggs—he just didn’t know what any of those measures were. What if they _could_ have eggs? How were they going to decide whether they should go in a volcano or—or wherever the golden ones thought eggs should go—a glacier? Outer space…?

“Bad?”

Startled from his thoughts, Nido looked at the golden ones. “What?”

“Are three,” the golden ones clarified.

“’ _We_ are three,’” Nido corrected. It was high time they start speaking in proper sentences. Trying to argue over the golden ones leaving Earth with a total of thirty words they both understood had been terrifyingly stressful. Nido needed to pick up his pace; he couldn’t just teach them words when they needed them, but _before_ they needed them. No more having vocabulary lessons in the middle of a crisis.

“We are three,” the golden ones accepted. “Is bad? Is good?”

Nido only had to consider the question for a split second; it took him longer to figure out how to phrase it in a way the golden ones could understand. “It is not bad, it is not good. It _is_.”

“It,” the golden ones mumbled, trying out the new word. The T sound was clicked sharply, like it was its own syllable. “What is ‘not bad not good’?”

“’Neutral.’”

Accepting that, they turned their gazes out toward sea again. One said, softly, “Good.”

If they were three, then Nido was going to have to start paying attention to who was speaking, wasn’t he? He was no longer dealing with one person with three mouths. Which head said what _mattered_ now. Had probably mattered all along without his noticing.

What differences had he noticed between them, though? What could he use to tell them apart?

All he could think of was that, earlier tonight, back on his island, when he’d pressed his head to one of theirs and scared them so badly, the right one had tried to attack him and the middle one had seized the right one by the throat.

So, that was a starting point. What did it tell him about them? The right one was violent and the middle one was… not violent? Most people would probably consider biting someone’s throat violent, though. The middle one was violently opposed to violence? The middle one didn’t want _Nido_ to be bitten?

He’d figure it out. He’d just have to observe them more closely from now on, that was all.

To Nido’s relief, the golden ones decided to wrap their wing around him again.

They should be thinking about how to get away from the ice, Nido knew. They were going to freeze to death if they stayed here. But that could wait a little longer. At least until the sun came up.

###

Nido looked up at the sound of a couple of loud metal birds flying by overhead. Oh, _those_. He watched them distrustfully. They’d attacked him in his volcano. Did their range extend this far south? Metal usually didn’t mix well with freezing temperatures. If they even _looked_ like they were thinking about attacking while the golden ones were injured…

“What is 'not rain’?”

Nido looked at them, saw their heads were turned toward the sky, and looked back up as well. Oh. Ugh. He hadn’t even realized it was beginning to snow again. That was even worse than the metal birds. “Snow,” he said. “Snow is bad.”

The golden ones made a noise of acknowledgment, a sound that came from too low in their chests for him to assign it to any one of the heads.

Nido made a note to himself: he was pretty sure the left one had asked about the snow. The left one’s voice was a little deeper.

“Hey,” Nido said. They looked at him. “What are your names?”

They gave him a completely blank look. He expected that. “Your name” was a new phrase.

“What is _my_ name? My name is Nido,” he said. “What are _your_ names?”

“Mm-y,” the middle one repeated, puzzled.

Okay, more clarification. "My… snow.“ Nido scooped up a bit of snow with one wing—that was a bad idea—and dumped it on his feet—oh, even worse idea. ” _Your_ snow.“ He scooped up more and dumped it on their feet.

The right one hissed quietly. They kicked the snow off.

Nido followed suit. _That_ had been a miserable wet experience. ” _My_ name is Nido. _Your_ name,“ he flicked a rock to the middle of the golden ones’ chest, "is golden ones.”

“Ihi.” Yes. They got it.

He flicked three more rocks at their necks. “What are _your_ names?” They had to have individual names, didn’t they?

They looked at each other, and for a moment seemed to shrink. “No,” the right one said shortly. “No names,” the left said.

“No names?”

“ _No_ names.”

Nido wanted to ask why. But even if they _had_ covered the word “why,” he doubted that the golden ones would have the ability to answer it.

Well, okay. He’d named them “the golden ones,” hadn’t he? He could give them new separate names. He picked up a rock, bounced it once on his beak, then flicked it at the nearest head—

And was startled into hopping back when a set of jaws snapped shut so close to his face that all he could see were fangs. “ _No names_ ,” the middle one snarled.

“No names!” Nido quickly agreed. “No names.”

Now he was desperate to know why. But for now, he decided, he’d just keep thinking of them as “left one,” “right one,” and “middle one.”

They lapsed into silence again. There were boats on the horizon. Nido knew boats. Floating things like pumice that humans hung out in. Smart of them. Kept them out of the water. The boats were a lot bigger now than they’d been before Nido had hibernated, but so were most of the other things that humans made.

The humans and their boats always seemed to be around when the metal birds were. Nido wondered if the birds were the humans’ prey? It would explain why they’d increased their boat sizes; they needed something to haul such big beasts home. (“Big beasts” compared to a human, anyway.)

These were some of the _massive_ metal boats. Nido settled down to watch them as their lights slowly drew closer.

###

“Hey. What is…?”

Nido looked up, waiting while the middle head tried to work out his question.

The sky was beginning to lighten, in a hazy grey way, but only in a way that served to turn the landscape into a black silhouette.

Through the darkness, Nido watched as the middle one curled one of their tails around and raised it to tap himself on the forehead. His tail faintly rattled as he did. (Nido loved that. He loved the rattling. It was among the coolest sounds he’d ever heard.) “What is it?”

“Head,” Nido said. Body parts were probably a good thing to cover. They at least needed to be able to talk about the golden ones’ injured wing.

The middle one looked like he was about to speak, then hesitated; instead, the left one ducked forward to look at Nido and ask, “Gidiwi heads Nido?”

“What?” _What??_ “No, no. Head, head, head, head.” He flipped rocks at his own head and at each one of theirs.

The middle one blinked when the rock bounced between his eyes. “No. What is…” He leaned toward Nido, hesitated, then pressed their foreheads together. “ _It?_ ”

Again, euphoric infatuation washed over him, almost dizzying in its intensity. Was this going to become a regular thing? Because he thought he could get to enjoy this—these sudden brief catapults up to the very peak of intoxicating affection, like free falling in reverse. But beneath the surface euphoria were boiling veins of uncertainty. Something angry. Something scared.

When the middle one pulled back, it took Nido a moment to figure out how exactly to answer. Did he say “telepathy”? Did he say “emotion”? Did he try to list the ten separate emotion he’d felt stirring around in there? Did he say “a crush”? Did he say “weirdly fast-developing infatuation”?

The golden ones were probably looking for the simplest possible answer, weren’t they? “Love,” Nido said. If that wasn’t what they’d been looking for, he’d just have to straighten it out later.

“Gidiwi loves Nido?” the left one asked.

Wow, that was a big question. “Yes,” he said uncertainly.

The middle one asked, "Nido not loves Gidiwi?“

That question was even worse. He decided stopping to correct their grammar, under the circumstances, would be a bit inconsiderate. "That's—I mean—usually that’s considered the _end game_ for courting, not a starting point—”

They stared at him in collective incomprehension.

Okay. How did he convey “eventually, maybe”? They hadn’t discussed time units yet. “Here, no,” he said carefully. “Near, no. Far…” He almost said “maybe,” stopped and thought about everything he knew about the golden ones—the way they fought, the way they flew, the way he felt when he felt one of their minds, the way he felt when he saw the bright gold their touch left behind on his armor—and finally, he said, “probably.”

Just saying “probably” felt a little bit like a love confession.

“What is 'probably’?” the right one asked. He’d somehow transformed the word into “pilabibili.”

Okay. Nido had this one. "'Neutral’ is between 'good’ and 'bad,’ yes?“

"Yes,” the middle one agreed, while the heads on either side mumbled “between” and “and,” testing out the new words.

“'Maybe’ is between 'yes’ and 'no.’”

“'Maybe.’”

“'Probably’ is between 'yes’ and 'maybe.’”

They considered that for a moment. And then their heads jerked up simultaneously, as they apparently all figured out what he meant. “Good,” the middle one said.

“'Probably’ is not 'not no,’” the right one said. Nido was momentarily in awe at the masterfully performed triple negative. “Yes?”

“Yyyes,” Nido said. He scooped back up the six rocks he’d been gesturing with, momentarily having to leave the shelter of the golden ones’ wing to do so. “Maybe no.” He dropped two rocks together. “Maybe yes.” He dropped four together in a separate pile. “Probably.”

They stared at the rocks, then at Nido, then at the rocks again, as if they couldn’t believe their eyes.

(They couldn’t. Their red sprite had just used physical objects to render an abstract concept into a mathematical fraction. That was the kind of absurdly advanced thinking that they did _not_ expect to find in someone who neither came from a tool-wielding species nor had a computer surgically welded to his spinal column. They’d just latched on to the red sprite because he was hot, pun unintended. Was he an undiscovered genius, too? He _had_ bested them in battle while they had him pinned on his back. He had to be remarkably intelligent. They were in over their heads with him, weren’t they?)

Finally, lamely, the right one repeated, “Not 'not no.’” He didn’t even flinch when the middle one bit at his horn. He just accepted it.

The left one cautiously bent down to lick one of the rocks.

Nido wondered how he hadn’t realized earlier that the heads were different people.

###

“What is 'not lose’?”

The horizon was orange and red, fading into a pale blue as dawn broke.

“Fly,” Nido replied. The golden ones should have known that. They’d already covered that word.

They gave him three baffled looks. “What.”

Surely they hadn’t forgotten what “fly” meant. It was one of their most frequently used words. “Two fight.” He sat down—oh, that was _the_ worst place to get snow—so he could pick up one rock with each foot and clack them against each other. “One loses.” He dropped the rock to the ground. (After all, to him, “losing” and “falling” were the same word.) “One flies.” He flung the rock off into the distance. (After all, to him, “winning” and “flying” were the same word.)

The golden ones stared at the rock, then at Nido, then at each other. Then said, trading off words between heads to try to get closer to the correct pronunciations, “Far fight, Gidiwi flies, Nido loses. Here fight, Nido flies, Gidiwi loses?”

Eh, the grammar was close enough. It had been a long night. “Yes!”

“Yes.”

Nido thought they were still puzzled, but he didn’t know why, so he let it be.

A flock of metal birds, flying in V formation, headed toward the largest of the boats he’d been watching drift through the sea. Oh, now he’d get to see whether or not his guess that the boats helped humans hunt the birds was true. If it was, then as they got close, they’d probably start flinging weapons at the birds, as they were so wont to do.

Instead, to his surprise, the birds dove toward the boats first—a preemptive attack? The birds were fond of those—and to his _greater_ surprise, they landed on top of it peacefully. He’d been completely wrong. The boats let the birds sit on them. Maybe the birds had a symbiotic relationship with humans? Maybe the boats served as their nests? It probably made it easier for them to travel around, if they had a boat they could rest on when they got tired of flying—

Hmm. Idea.

Nido hopped out from under the golden ones’ wing and shook himself, trying to get some warmth back into his wing tips. “What?” the golden ones asked.

“I’m flying to the boat.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I am flying,” he bent down and flicked a rock into the water toward the boat that the birds had landed on, “to the boat.”

“What! No! Nido, stop—”

“Golden ones stop,” Nido said, and took off. “I’m flying near. Back _soon_.”

“ _Nido!_ ”

He flew off anyway. They probably thought he was abandoning them. They’d see in a moment that he wasn’t even flying outside of their view, and then they’d be fine, right?

The largest of the boats was twice as long as the golden ones were tall. It’d definitely support their weight, right? Probably. Sure. Definitely. It was worth trying, anyway.

The humans on top of the boat started running around as he flapped down to the boat, perched on the end of it—and immediately took off again in a panic when the boat creaked and tilted under him. Okay, that was his fault, he’d landed on the edge, he should have distributed his weight more evenly. The boat bobbed back up to even. This would still work. The golden ones were a lot taller than Nido, but they didn’t have his stone armor—so they were probably about the same weight as him, right? And the boat definitely would have held Nido if he’d landed in the middle. Right. Sure. Definitely.

“Hi,” he chirped cheerily at the humans, trying to tilt his wings so that most of the wind he displaced was pointed at the ocean rather than at the boat. Nobody appeared to be getting blown overboard, at least. “My friends have an injured wing. You can give them a ride, can’t you?”

They didn’t react. With an irritated click, Nido picked up a cylinder off the top of their boat with his beak—it immediately caught fire—and flung it toward the coast. “Go!” he said. “Go fetch. Go get it.”

No change. Well, all right, if they were going to be dumb about it. He grabbed onto the end of the boat with his talons and beat his wings, trying to tug it to the shore himself. After a minute or so of incredibly slow progress, he felt the boat start propelling itself. He let go, relieved, and soared back to the golden ones.

They were huddled together over the exploded barrel he’d flung in their direction, taking turns licking it—what, did they like it? Nido thought it had tasted pretty nasty—but they looked up when he landed in front of them. “There’s your ride back home,” he said.

“Bad,” the left one scolded.

“What, you don’t like humans?”

They grumbled something he didn’t understand.

But when the boat was as close as it could get without running aground and Nido urged, “Go,” they reluctantly waded out into the water. They considered the boat dubiously. The middle head bit up another one of the barrels on top, crunched it to puncture the sides—Nido saw some kind of gross-looking brown liquid drip out of the golden ones’ mouth—and swallowed it.

And then, very carefully, they climbed onto the boat.

It groaned under their weight, the deck sinking closer and closer to the waterline as they put more and more weight on it. The golden ones froze with their weight only half on it. “No good,” they said.

“Good!” Nido reassured them with way more confidence than he felt. They might as well try. If it didn’t work, what was the worse that was going to happen? They sank a human boat and ended up back where they started? No big loss.

Reluctantly, the golden ones climbed completely onto the boat.

The boat, miraculously, remained stable. The golden ones sat in the dead center of it, tails around their feet and wings wrapped tight around their torso, looking like—well—like how Nido would probably look if he was sitting on a human boat that was barely holding his weight aloft over a frigid ocean.

And then the boat started going down.

“Oh,” Nido said.

They glowered back at him.

“Sorry,” Nido said.

They said something he couldn’t understand. (What they said translated to, “That _better_ have meant 'sorry.’”) The right one seized up and swallowed another of the barrels; and then Nido could see lightning rumbling up all three of their throats, glowing through the flesh. The few humans still on top of the boat went into a frenzy of activity.

What. Were the golden ones going to attack the boat they were sitting on? Did they _want_ to land in the water? “Uh, hey…”

But they didn’t. When the electricity reached their mouths, it didn’t shoot out like lightning; instead, it curled around their heads, back down their necks, and across their body. A few stray bolts arced off their scales, setting a couple of small, totally ignorable fires, but otherwise they reabsorbed the electricity.

And then the boat rose out of the water, back nearly to the level it had been at before the golden ones had sat on it.

Nido stared.

The golden ones looked up at him. “Yes?”

Well. That was, apparently, another thing they could do. _Whatever_ it was they had done. “… Good!” Nido said. “I’ll lead.” With that, he took off, spiraling high overhead.

The boat slowly chugged after him.

The golden ones unwrapped their injured wing to let it drape over the front half of the boat, lay down on their chest, curled their good wing and legs up under them, and got comfortable for the long ride home.

###

“What do you mean,” Admiral Stenz barked, “you let Monster Zero hitch a ride back to Isla de Mara?! Don’t you know what that thing _is?!_ ”

“With all due respect, sir,” the supercarrier’s captain said, “do _you_ know how to say 'no’ to a hitchhiking dragon?”

Stenz propped his elbows on his desk and dropped his face into his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Couple notes on the fic:
> 
> \- It's not mentioned in this fic (although it'll become clearer in the next one), but I headcanon that Ghidorah gets drunk on gasoline. If KOTM is going to use them as a blatant climate change metaphor, I'm gonna roll with it. [Fuller post here](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/187448757417/thinkin-bout-a-drunk-kaiju). So, to be clear, they're not snatching up oil barrels to help power up their gravity beams; they're going "if this hot bird is trying to get us on a flimsy metal raft in the middle of the ocean, we're gonna need to toss back a couple drinks first."
> 
> \- If canon is going to keep insisting that Ghidorah's "lightning" is called "gravity beams" then I'm going to give them gravity-manipulating powers even in continuities where that's never been established.
> 
> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/187489085697/conversational-pteranodon-intermediate-level). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)!


End file.
